Middlemen in English Business 409 



PEDIGREES OF THE COMMERCIAL CLASSES. 



The merchants were derived from various sources. The differen- 

 tiation of the merchant and tradesman from the craftsman of the 

 early gilds appears to have been on the basis of gild master and gild 

 yeomen. The master had to care for the disposition of the manu- 

 facture and was the most likely to be drawn into trade. This is 

 illustrated by the drapers and merchant tailors/ the masters of which 

 companies, even in the time of Edward III, were the great importers 

 of woolen and linen cloth. The increase in the wealth and the number 

 of the people recjuired a greater division of labor, and the freemen, 

 having become rich, gave themselves over exclusively to trade and 

 left way for a further differentiation among the yeomen into small 

 masters and journeymen. And with these latter the same process of 

 differentiation repeated itself, resulting finally in three classes, (a) 

 journeymen craftsmen, (b) retail shopkeepers, and (c) large masters, 

 to which rank some arose, and small masters. 



The master of the gild, who gave up the manual side of the business, 

 became either a shipping merchant or an employing merchant. The 

 earliest shipping merchants were at once ship-owners, ship-masters, 

 and exporters of goods; these three branches became specialized in 

 whole or part before 1760. The exporting merchant either travelled 

 abroad with his cargo or employed agents to accompany it or to 

 receive it by consignment: these agents specialized as supercargoes 

 and factors. The merchants separated their multifarious employ- 

 ments — some became bankers, some insurers, some speculated in 

 stocks and commodities, some became commission-house factors, and 

 others remained exporters of merchandise and used these other parties 

 in the prosecution of exporting. 



The employing merchants distributed themselves into three cate- 

 gories — becoming wholesalers, retail shopkeepers, or large masters, 

 such as the western clothiers. As has been shown elsewhere, the 

 clothiers were related to the wholesalers and merchants by factors, 

 and the wholesalers sold to the retailers. From the journeymen 

 differentiated a class of small masters, some of whom became large 

 masters and others shopkeepers. These differentiations are shown 

 in the accompanying outline. 



' See Brentano in T. Smith, Eng. Gilds, CVII; Unwin, Ind. Org., 44-5; Herbert, 

 I, 29; Hazlitt, 265-6. 



